Why do we complicate pleasure?

Hello pot. Pleased to meet you my name is kettle. But, being guilty of a misdeed that I accuse others of doesn’t make it any less of a misdeed. It simply means that we are both wrong and have mutual ground to improve upon. So, now I ask this question of myself.

Why do I complicate happiness? The answer I think lays in a philosophical exploration. Surprise! Its nature is actually both linguistic and cosmological. Are pleasure and happiness affective, under the influence of the emotions, or products of cognition that are noetic, governed by reason? If happiness is under the purview of reason and therefore rational, is the experience under our control or is it a pre-rational, intuitional response? Now, I know what your thinking. “This seems more complicated. I thought this was about untangling the rats nest that keep us from happiness?!?” Stick with me. We will untangle it. But first, we need to find the kink in the line. Another issue that we need to ponder is whether simple pleasure is better than grand pleasure. This line of reasoning is nothing new. Epicurus, and Epictetus identified that we tend to create barriers to ataraxia, that’s pleasure without pain, in the 5th century BCE. But, are they right? Is pursuing luxury, romance, and hoping for the best really a recipe grief and suffering? Finally, are pleasures and pains universal experiences, that is, the same for everybody? Or is it more like Jeremy Bentham posits, that the only thing universal about pleasure is that we all experience it from time to time. Maybe, the sensations and experience that individuals interpret as pleasurable is about as varied as a phenomena gets.

To be honest we aren’t going to resolve this issue in a single Blog issue no matter how cunning my turn of phrase. I just want you to think about these things, identify the threads of your pleasure and suffering. Think about the Gordian knot in front of you and analyze it. Sit with it for as long as your schedule allows, but at least a minute or so. After you’ve spent some time scroll down to the next section of this entry… (it’s in this post just keep scrolling)

Wait for it… examine that feeling you experience as you explore these complicated hard to distinguish thoughts. Note the critical air to your thinking,. Savor, the aha, the praxis, the rigor. Get excited when something that seemed obvious a moment ago is actually a dead end. That is a principle you can disregard. We all to often try to avoid complication. And the very thing we avoid might just be the key to happiness, and pleasure. As you sit here in contemplation on this issue perhaps you’ve had a realization. Most of the time we don’t really make seeking pleasure complicated after all. Instead I propose that we avoid the very complications that produce the state.

Dear reader be reassured that I have my thoughts about the questions in the opener. The questions and my solutions to them weren’t the point of this exercise, only the method. And this exercise was purely meditative. Imagine the delicious complications that arise when we enter into a philosophical discussion with someone else. Philosophy and principles of philosophy do not flourish in a vacuum. They need sounding boards and in the best cases a goalies that keeps us from scoring the easy unjustified point. I would love to hear what you came to in your meditation. Respond in the comments below.

Alternatively, a session with an APPA trained Counselor is a wonderful way to contemplate and explore these ideas. Open up all of these possibilities by Booking an appointment with Eu:PhORIC philosophical counseling today.

Think Well. Run Often. Be Happy.

-Cecil

Who Needs Philosophy?

This question is the beginning, middle, and end of any pursuit of wisdom, knowledge, happiness, or meaning. Even asking the question engages the discipline. Whether you know it or not you need and use philosophy every single day of your life. One of the many great evils of the 20th-Century was that academic philosophy became obsessed with wonky obscure questions that really had little direct effect in the common person’s life. I could wax for hours on the causes and justifications for this fixation but to no real end.

The good news is that once every few centuries someone comes around and shakes the tree of the academy to loosen out all of the dross. And when that happens we philosophers remember why we all started our love of the greatest discipline in the first place. Philosophy makes people happy. Doing it, talking about it, sharing our findings and our failings, pondering the nature of beauty, and love, and ethics, and justice makes folks better. Philosophy is intrinsically valuable. While it’s not easy for everyone to learn, I am of the opinion and have evidence, with over 10-years of personal experience teaching philosophy at community college and at public high schools, that with the right teacher and philosopher anyone can do philosophy and thereby make their life better.

So I love this question and I believe that the answer is that we all do at different times in our lives. If its dealing with loss, or responsibility, or obligation. Thinking about what makes life worth living and being able to justify why. The skills that I have learned in my philosophical training have no limits on the good that they have provided in my life. My students regularly reach out to me to share how my seemingly impractical subject has improved their lives, college experiences, love lives, sense of citizenship and self, career and beyond.

Philosophical counseling with an APPA trained therapist is one way to approach philosophical thinking for those who missed the initiation of the academy. I would love to speak with you one-on-one about how philosophy can help you contextualize the world and your problems in it, and start you on the path of self-mastery and eventually the happiest version of yourself. The journey to self discovery starts with an intention to walk it, and as Siddartha would argue a single step.

Take that step and BOOK a session today.

-Think Well. Run Often. Be Happy.

Cecil